On June 16, a caravan of relatives and comrades of the disappeared and murdered students from Ayotzinapa arrived to Chiapas to meet with indigenous communities organized within the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) who adhere to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle. Doña Bertha Nava and Don Tomás Ramírez, the parents of Julio César Ramírez Nava, who was murdered on September 26, 2014 in Iguala, Guerrero, Doña Cristina Bautista Salvador, mother of Benjamín Ascencio Bautista (disappeared), and Omar García, a student from the Rural Normal School, comprised the caravan. The caravan began its first day in the community of San Francisco, municipality of Teopisca, with the participation of Semilla Digna, a collective from the Chiapas highlands, the Network in Defense of Indigenous Peoples of the Highlands of Chiapas, and the Las Abejas Civil Society. Omar García noted that “Ayotzinapa has united many of us, and if we are not all against the system, we still work together, because we do not count ourselves by number, but rather by strength of relationships that are weaved in this struggle.” Regarding the pain of Acteal, he said, “what you have suffered, we too have suffered. Now we must confront that pain, together, with you.”

On June 17, the caravan continued onto San Sebastián Bachajón, municipality of Chilón, with the presence and participation of members organized in the ejido of San Sebastián Bachajón, representatives of communities that make up the People United in Defense of Electrical Energy (PUDEE) and the ejido of Tila. In Cumbre Nachoj, the headquarters of the ejido where the meeting took place, Doña Berta expressed that “in Tixtla Guerrero, we thought it was just us, but all of us have been beaten down by the government in one way or another.” The conclusion of the caravan took place in Palenque with the organization XINICH that is comprised of indigenous communities of the northern Lacandon jungle, ejidatarios from San Sebastián Bachajón, the Autonomous Council of the Coastal Zone, human-rights defenders, and the civil society in solidarity, demanding justice for Ayotzinapa and also for the case of the massacre in the Viejo Velasco community in the Ocosingo municipality that continues in impunity and took place in 2006.

Members of the San Sebastián Bachajón ejido, Chilón municipality, reported that on 20 May Delmar Feliciano Méndez, 17 years of age and an adherent to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, died by drowning when two municipal police patrols pursued him until he fell into the river. The ejidatari@s in resistance demadned justice for the death of Delmar Feliciano and expressed that his struggle for the defense of the land and territory will not stop.

Similarly, they published a note announcing that on 29 and 30 May, they would mobilize themselves peacefully to protest “the plundering of our territory and the murders committed by the bad government of Enrique Peña Nieto and Manuel Velasco Coello,” given that “they care nothing about murdering and forcibly disappearing students like our comrades from Ayotzinapa, the teacher comrade Galeano, Juan Vázquez Guzmán, and Juan Carlos Gomez Silvano. Their idea is to sow terror in the communities to continue doing their Narco-State big business,” they added. In addition, they demand “the liberation of our prisoners in Yajalón, JUAN ANTONIO GOMEZ SILVANO, MARIO AGUILAR SILVANO and ROBERTO GOMEZ HERNANDEZ; prisoners in Playas de Catazajá, SANTIAGO MORENO PEREZ and EMILIO JIMENEZ GOMEZ; and our prisoner in Amate, ESTEBAN GOMEZ JIMENEZ.”

Ejidatarios from San Sebastián Bachajón, who struggle against the imposition of tourist megaprojects on their land, have been denied the legal motion they had presented to the courts in March 2011. After three cancellations, an attempt to transfer the case to the Supreme Court for Justice in the Nation, and despite the the detection of violations of due process, a federal tribunal denied the motion 274/2011. In a communique released on 10 April, the anniversary of the murder of Emiliano Zapata, the ejidatarios reported their knowledge of the refusal of the motion, reaffirmed their commitment to the struggle against the State, and denounced that official authorities are meeting with party-members from the region, seeking to develop strategies to crush their own autonomous process.

This struggle over the management of lands surrounding the Agua Azul waterfalls has resulted in three violent displacement operations, two murdered communal leaders (Juan Vázquez Guzmán, killed on 24 April 2013, and Juan Carlos Gómez Silvano, killed on 21 March 2014), and several political prisoners. Recently, the ejidatarios also had their regional headquarters burned down, in an operation that involved 600 police, who threatened two autonomous journalists and took their equipment.

In the latest communique, released on 11 April, the ejidatarios make an invitation to the commemoration of the murder of Juan Vázquez Guzmán. On 24 April, the second anniversary of his, a mass will be held in the family home of Juan Vázquez Guzmán at 3pm.

As a means of popular pressure, a petition has been launched on www.change.org, and the Chiapas Center for Women’s Rights seeks signatures for its communique in support of the ejidatarios. Those interested can email adorsetchiapassolidarity@aol.co.uk.

On 21 March, ejidatarios from San Sebastián Bachajón denounced that more than 600 state security forces burned down the regional headquarters of San Sebastián, with the participation of the ejidal commission and the security council. They explaiend that “after the violent displacement of 9 January 2015, we founded a regional headquarters for San Sebastián to continue caring for the lands and demand the withdrawal of the bad government. We will continue, as we are indigenous to these lands, and we will not allow the bad government come to rule over the people.” They also indicated that the group from the ejidal commission “has blockaded the highway between Ocosingo and Palenque at the Agua Azul crossing in an attempt to blame us for the blockade. Also, these stooges from the bad government are cutting down trees, and we know that they seek to fabricate crimes of ecocide with which to imprison the autonomous authorities of our organization.”

They demanded “the withdrawal of public forces from our lands, which have been plundered since February 2011, and of the National Commission on Protected Natural Areas,” besides the “release of our political prisoners Juan Antonio Gómez Silvano, Mario Aguilar Silvano, and Roberto Gómez Hernández, and of the unjustly imprisoned comrades Santiago Moreno Perez, Emilio Jimenez Gomez, and Esteban Gomez Jimenez.”

Beyond this, two members of autonomous-media collectives denounced having been attacked by the ejidal commissioner’s group of San Sebastián Bachajón. They reported that they were surrounded, arrested, beaten, and threatened with machetes, so that they would hand over a Canon 70D camera and a tripod on 21 March, when they sought to document the displacement and arson of the regional headquarters. Beyond this, they indicated that, upon passing the control-point and continuing toward the regional autonomous headquarters of San Sebastián, they found four state police trucks and more than 200 “officialists armed with machetes, some of them inebriated.”

On 14 February the adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle from the San Sebastián Bachajon ejido published a new communique, in which they denounce that “the bad government is using a strategy with supposed tourist firms to create an environment of persecution against the indigenous communities, especially our organization, as we see in the imposition of false charges (highway robbery and organized crime) to defame our struggle, as if we were common criminals or thugs! It is for this reason that they send evermore police to our region of San Sebastian, which is near the Agua Azul crossroads on the highway between Ocosingo and Palenque.” They demanded that “the three levels of the bad government respect the organized peoples and communities […], the retreat of public security forces from our lands that have been taken since February 2011, as well as the withdrawal of the National Commission on Protected Natural Areas,” in addition to the release of the prisoners Juan Antonio Gómez Silvano, Mario Aguilar Silvano, Roberto Gómez Hernández, Santiago Moreno Perez, Emilio Jimenez Gomez, and Esteban Gomez Jimenez.

On 29 January, ejidatarios from San Sebastián Bachajón, Chilón municipality, adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle, published a communique which reports that they will maintain their posture of defending their lands and that, toward this end, they have installed a regional headquarters for the ejido between the Agua Azul crossroads at the entrance of the waterfalls of the same name and the limits of the Tumbalá municipality.

They denounced furthermore that since the displacement operation they suffered on 9 January 2015, police presence has been constant, such that they have called on Governor Manuel Velasco Coello to immediately order the withdrawal of public security forces and to discontinue intimidation and repression.

They reported as well that the ejidal commissioner, Alejandro Moreno Gómez, together with his security advisor are organizing shock-groups that “fire into the night with high-caliber weapons,” thus frightening local residents.

They noted lastly that “private meetings are being held between the Chilón delegate Francisco Demeza Hernández and Carlos Jiménez Trujillo, a local deputy, to plan for [more] looting, such that our comrades are guarding the regional headquarters and are charging the quotas at the entrance of the Agua Azul waterfalls. We hold the three levels of government responsible for any type of attack or confrontation that could develop.”

For his part, the “official” ejidal commissioner of San Sebastián Bachajón, Alejandro Moreno Gómez, has told the media that “at present we are being affected by a group of approximately 100 persons, men and women who hail from different municipalities of the state of Chiapas, adherents to an organization called the Other Campaign or the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle, who have violently appropriated ejidal lands […]. We demand respect for the autonomy of the ejido and for non-violence. They must put down their arms and opt for the path of dialogue and social peace.”

The first report of the caravan of adherents to the Sixth who went to visit San Sebastián Bachajón ein January stresses the attempt made by the ejidal commissioner to “portray these events as an inter-communal conflict that only has to do with the internal politics of the Bachajón community rather than the interests of the government and tourist firms.”